In late August 2007, Mooseheart Child City & School Executive Director Scott Hart and Superintendent of Education (and head football coach) Gary Urwiler were contacted by a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, America's sixth-largest newspaper, with a request to research and produce an in-depth, magazine-length piece on the 2007 Red Ramblers football team -- moreover, on the relationship between the football program and the entire culture and operation of the Mooseheart campus.

Reporter John Keilman and photographer/videographer Stacey Wescott requested, and were granted, three months of full and comprehensive access to the campus, its students and staff -- to an extraordinary degree unprecedented in Mooseheart's 94-year history.

Hart and Urwiler, with the approval of Moose International Chief Operating Officer Leonard Solfa Jr., entered into this agreement because of their firm belief in every aspect of Mooseheart's program; a belief that, while Mooseheart is, of course, imperfect because human beings operate it, that nonetheless, a full and unbiased examination of what Mooseheart is all about, would only bring credit to its program. All involved were confident that such examination would, on balance, result in a public document of which Mooseheart, and the men and women of the Moose who support it, could be proud.

We wish to emphasize that the coverage you are about to read was not subject to review by Mooseheart or Moose International officials before its publication. Now that we have seen it in print and on the Web, we think you will agree that Scott Hart's and Gary Urwiler's confidence in subjecting themselves and their program to such scrutiny was more than justified. We're extremely proud of both these gentlemen and the campus they run. We think you will be too.

We invite you to enjoy John Keilman's and Stacey Wescott's coverage of the 2007 Red Ramblers football team (with video production by Jennifer Fletcher of chicagotribune.com), as seen by the more than 1 million circulation of the Chicago Tribune and hundreds of thousands more Web viewers over Thanksgiving weekend, Nov. 22-23-24, 2007.

Kurt Wehrmeister
Director, Communications & Public Affairs, Moose International

See Full Chicago Tribune Story Here

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